IT is remarkable that this bird does not hatch its eggs by incubation. It collects together a great heap of decaying vegetables as the place of deposit of its eggs, thus making a hotbed, arising from the decomposition of the collected matter, by the heat of which the young are hatched. This mound varies in quantity from two to four cart-loads, and is not the work of a single pair of birds, but is the result of the united labour of many. Mr. Gould, in his _Birds of Australia_, gives the following account of the discovery of one of these nests by Mr. Gilbert:-- “I landed beside a thicket, and had not proceeded far from the shore, ere I came to a mound of sand and shells, with a slight mixture of black soil, the base resting on a sandy beach, only a few feet above high-water mark; it was enveloped in the large yellow-blossomed Hibiscus, and was of a conical form, twenty feet in circumference at the base, and about five feet in height. On pointing it out to the native, and asking him what it was, he replied, ‘Oooregoorga Rambal,’ Jungle-fowls’ house or nest. I then scrambled up the sides of it, and, to my extreme delight, found a young bird in a hole about two feet deep; it was lying on a few dry withered leaves, and appeared only a few days old. So far I was satisfied that these mounds had some connection with the bird’s mode of incubation; but I was still sceptical as to the probability of these young birds ascending from so great a depth as the natives represented, and my suspicions were confirmed by my being unable to induce the native, in this instance, to search for the eggs, his excuse being that he knew it would be no use, as he saw no traces of the old birds having recently been there. I took the utmost care of the young bird, intending to rear it if possible; I therefore obtained a moderate-sized box, and placed in it a large portion of sand. As it fed rather freely on bruised Indian corn, I was in full hopes of succeeding; but it proved of so wild and intractable a disposition, that it would not reconcile itself to such close confinement, and effected its escape on the third day. During the period it remained in captivity, it was incessantly occupied in scratching up the sand into heaps, and the rapidity with which it threw the sand from one end of the box to the other was quite surprising for so young and small a bird, its size not being larger than that of a small quail.